Talk:Kent State shootings

Article Name

How is this article not titled "Kent State massacre"? It's by far the most common name used to refer to the slaughter that happened that day. Hallward's Ghost (Kevin) (My talkpage) 20:29, 8 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Absolutely. A quick search on Google Trends[1] shows that massacre is the more commonly used term by web searchers in the US and Worldwide. MichaelWPhelps (talk) 04:56, 13 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

This was discussed quite awhile back when the article was new. See Talk:Kent State shootings/Archive 1#Shootings vs Massacre. Of note, the National Historic Landmark listing is "May 4, 1970, Kent State Shootings Site". It's also referred to as the "Kent State Shootings" or "May 4 Shootings" at Ohio History Central, History.com, and by Kent State University itself, among others. In a Google search, however, "Kent State shootings" returns 103,000 results, while "Kent State massacre" returns 63,000. Massacre is used regularly (hence the redirect and the bolded term), but nothing indicates it has any kind of significant precedence in secondary sources over "shootings". --JonRidinger (talk) 19:00, 13 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, JonRidinger has it right. Tvoz/talk 22:41, 13 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure listing a .gov site in your point is a great idea for an event where the government massacred unarmed protestors. A bit of an editorial bias there, wouldn't you think? 74.138.112.174 (talk) 20:47, 20 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The argument is valid and the sources used acceptable, but I'm going to call out the double-standard here cause by this same token the article "1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre" would not use that name & be renamed instead. 178.192.109.96 (talk) 16:36, 26 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

This was unequivocally a massacre of innocent civilians peacefully protesting. It was not a shooting. The title is politically biased snd shameful. Xj (talk) 00:46, 28 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Please read the reasoning behind the title - above and in the talk archives. Editors are not minimizing the horror of the event, nut but following Wikipedia standards for other events, using the more neutral but accurate term "shootings". We are attempting to stay away from bias here, despite personal views of that day. Tvoz/talk 03:54, 28 June 2022 (UTC) corrected Tvoz/talk 04:14, 29 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Your reply would be less biased, if you did not call Xj by the term "nut". Dimadick (talk) 07:40, 28 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Uh, Dimadick - is this supposed to be a joke? Obviously I made a typo. Tvoz/talk 04:14, 29 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
As I said 4 years ago, the article is titled based on how it is most frequently referenced in primary and secondary sources per Wikipedia guidelines on article titles. Because "massacre" is used in many secondary sources, it is a redirect and a bold term in the lead, but it isn't the main title because "shootings" has shown to be more common. If primary and secondary sources start using "massacre" more frequently, the article name can be revisited. But for now, nothing has changed since 2018 in how it's referenced. --JonRidinger (talk) 14:05, 29 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
According to the guidelines set by Wikipedia we should be using language that is commonly referred to in language and not necessarily the "official" title, this is even the case in celebrity and historical figures names. It is abundantly obvious that the term "massacre" is used by more people and that it is the common name accepted, thus it should be the name used for the article. Additionally, shooting is not the more precise term to use with this incident, it was more than just a shooting. Let's be true to what it is commonly referred to as and be precise in using the more correct terminology of calling it a "massacre". 2604:F580:14F:600:B15A:A4D9:1E27:DA2E (talk) 19:04, 10 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The Boston Massacre killed 5 and wounded 6. The Kent State Massacre killed 4 and wounded 9 (one of whom spent the rest of his life in a wheelchair). I remember it well. It WAS a real massacre. Let's be consistent and also not euphemize a pivotal event in US history for public relations purposes, unlike the British who refer to their 18th Century massacre as a mere "incident". Using the correct terminology is the least we can do to honor the dead and wounded in both instances. In the case of Kent State, the students weren't even near enough to pose a significant threat (unlike the Bostonians) and some were actually just uninvolved bystanders. 196.20.217.18 (talk) 13:58, 5 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@196.20.217.18 agreed, let's put the correct name 24.232.34.102 (talk) 16:48, 4 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

This has been discussed and debated many times. The consensus is that the way the article is titled is correct. Please read the archives. User:JonRidinger above still has the right response. Tvoz/talk 04:21, 6 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

And I will add nothing has changed since 2018 or 2022. The article title is correct since "Kent State shootings" remains the most common name given to the event. Having "Kent State Massacre" as a bold term and a redirect is still correct too since it's a term that has widespread, but not majority, usage in secondary sources. Bringing personal opinions about whether or not it was a massacre, why "shootings" was used, or even why what happened in Boston is called the Boston Massacre are irrelevant to the discussion; it only matters what the majority of secondary sources use when referring to it. To change the article title we'd need to see evidence that secondary sources use "massacre" at a higher frequency that "shootings" when referencing the event. Again, has nothing to do with feelings. --JonRidinger (talk) 17:48, 6 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

References

Balance

When you throw rocks at soldiers you are likely to get shot. The rocks are mentioned, but swamped by the minutiae about the soldiers turning prior to shooting,etc. 76.16.131.53 (talk) 19:27, 8 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Minutiae like:
   "An officer told the sitting students: "disperse or we will shoot again". Student photographer John Filo also recalled guardsmen telling lingering students that they would shoot again if the students did not disperse."

   "No guardsman claimed to have been hit by rocks immediately before firing, and the guardsmen were not surrounded. The FBI determined that at least two guardsmen who denied firing likely lied and had fired and that there was reason to believe that guardsmen's claims of fearing for their lives were fabricated after the event."

   "The President's Commission on Campus Unrest avoided probing why the shootings happened. Instead, it harshly criticized both the protesters and the Guardsmen, but it concluded that "the indiscriminate firing of rifles into a crowd of students and the deaths that followed were unnecessary, unwarranted, and inexcusable.""
Kind regards,
-J Jay Hodec (talk) 11:09, 12 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
THere was no evidence that rocks were thrown or hit anyone immediately before the soldiers fired what they knew to be live ammunition directly into the crowd supporting the false assertion that the armed soldiers feared for their lives. And even if so, rocks and bullets are not at all the same. They could have shot into the air. They could have shot into the ground. And most importantly it is not minutiae to determine if the soldiers were acting under direct contemporaneous orders to pivot, aim, and shoot. That is the crux of the matter. And it is crucial information for this article. Bill Schroeder and Sandra Scheuer weren't even participating in the protest. So for the OP to say "When you throw rocks at soldiers you are likely to get shot." ignores the truth of the situation.Tvoz/talk 20:50, 15 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Missing reliable source

In two different portions of this article, it is stated that 4 million students protested these shootings. However, the adjacent footnotes confirm information stated subsequently -- none are the source for this number. This needs a reliable source, especially because that would put those protests to spot #5 in List of protests and demonstrations in the United States by size. That list seems to be impaired by recentism, with only 6 entries before 1980 -- but that's another issue & not relevant to this article. -- 03:16, 18 October 2025 (UTC)

Four of the survivors have since died

John Cleary passed away on October 25, 2025. 2601:18A:8181:E00:968:3364:D234:C4AB (talk) 16:08, 3 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Partof header

I still wholly reject the premise that we cannot add "part of the Kent State Shootings" because it was not planned as part of some broader military campaign. That is not a logical arguement on Wikipedia, as there are plenty of events described in the infobox as part of a broader movement whether motivated by or in reaction to it. The protest itself was part of the student strike, and the shootings themselves were an event that happened in reaction to the protest. So this absolutely was part of the student strike. GOLDIEM J (talk) 16:03, 13 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Was there a Sniper?

Articles from the era indicate that there was no proof of a sniper. https://www.nytimes.com/1970/05/06/archives/ohio-guard-finds-no-proof-of-sniper-but-officers-say-troops-at-kent.html https://aadl.org/node/85238

A more recent article (2010) also revealed the the OHNG was given the order to prepare to fire: https://www.cleveland.com/metro/2010/05/new_analysis_of_40-year-old_re.html ~2026-30658-1 (talk) 20:53, 14 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Edit warring over lead sentence

Surtsicna has begun an edit war to change the lead sentence of this article to their preferred version that omits the title of the article. More importantly, it omits the title of the redirect Kent State massacre and some of the key references that support the title of the article. This is disruptive because the alternative title is proposed here in Talk and in edits quite often (I believe there's currently a section discussing this in Talk right now which is quite common). It's also disruptive, of course, to edit war over something without even attempting to discuss the issue with other editors. ElKevbo (talk) 15:18, 18 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

No war has been declared. There is no requirement that either the article title or redirects appear in the lead sentence. In fact, no such descriptive names should be crammed into the lead per MOS:LEAD. Overloading the sentence with repetition–Kent State shootings or May 4 massacre were the shootings of Kent State students on May 4–does not help readers. Surtsicna (talk) 17:28, 18 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
To the contrary, the guideline you're citing explicitly says: "If possible, the page title should be the subject of the first sentence." Your proposed sentence - which indeed has been added by you edit warring - makes the victims of the shootings the subject which violates the guideline.
Please self-revert your proposed change to the status quo ante until we can reach consensus. You don't get to personally dictate the contents of this article over the good-faith objections of other editors. ElKevbo (talk) 18:08, 18 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
MOS:LEADTITLE: "If the article title is merely descriptive—such as Electrical characteristics of dynamic loudspeakers—it does not need to appear verbatim in the first sentence." Then there is MOS:AVOIDBOLD:

If the article title does not lend itself to being used easily and naturally in the first sentence, the wording should not be distorted in an effort to include it. Instead, simply describe the subject in normal English, avoiding unnecessary redundancy.

The 2011 Mississippi River floods were a series of floods affecting the Mississippi River in April and May 2011, which were among the largest and most damaging recorded along the U.S. waterway in the past century.
Major floods along the Mississippi River in April and May 2011 were among the largest and most damaging recorded along the U.S. waterway in the past century.
Therefore, we ought to avoid unnecessary redundancy. Surtsicna (talk) 18:22, 18 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
I disagree and I continue to object to your having shoved your preferred version of the text into the article by initiating an edit war. ElKevbo (talk) 18:25, 18 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
On what basis do you disagree with the guideline? How does repetitiveness help readers? Surtsicna (talk) 18:46, 18 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
You're not nearly as clever as you think you are by accusing me of "disagree[ing] with the guideline." We disagree on how it should best be interpreted.
You've edit warred to change the article to your preferred version and are now accusing me of disagreeing with a guideline. It's clear that you are not interested in sincere collaboration so I am done interacting with you. Congratulations on forcing your preferred version of the article into being! Best of luck maintaining the article; I am removing it from my watchlist so I no longer have to interact with you. ElKevbo (talk) 21:22, 18 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Wow. Surtsicna (talk) 21:50, 18 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
allikas: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Kent_State_shootings